The House of the Spirits

I read this as a teenager, also recommended by my father, and it was the novel that set me on the path to being a writer of magical realism. I was absolutely entranced by the plethora of characters and their strange, but unquestioned, quirks. Until then I hadn’t realised that authors for adults (Tolkien being banned in our house) were allowed to make such literary leaps and thus, for better or worse, Allende tilted the slant of my pen towards the fantastical. When I later discovered Angela Carter, my destiny was set.